[WashingtonTimes] A female California lawmaker who has been at the forefront of the #MeToo movement is being accused by multiple men of lewd groping, one of which acts is the object of an official probe by the state legislature.

State Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, Los Angeles County Democrat, is being investigated by the Assembly Rules Committee over passes made against another lawmaker’s male aide.

Daniel Fierro told Politico that in 2014, Ms. Garcia, whom he said seemed drunk, caught him alone after the Assembly’s softball game, stroked his back, squeezed his butt and tried to touch him in the groin area.

Mr. Fierro was able to get away unscathed but did not tell his boss, Assemblyman Ian Calderon, at the time.

“Who wants to be that guy that Cristina Garcia is going after?” he told Politico.

However, he did tell at least two Assembly staffers at the time of Ms. Garcia’s behavior, each of whom confirmed that fact to Politico.

Mr. Fierro told Mr. Calderon, his former boss, about the incident with Ms. Garcia in January in the wake of the #MeToo movement. The Assembly Rules Committee began its investigation shortly afterward, Politico reported.

A second man, a lobbyist who spoke to Politico on condition of anonymity, described a similar assault at a fundraiser at the capital’s De Veres bar.

According to the lobbyist, who fears reprisals from a powerful lawmaker, she tried to grab his crotch and he replied “That ain’t gonna happen.”

In a statement Thursday to Politico, Ms. Garcia said she had “zero recollection” of the claimed events.

“Every complaint about sexual harassment should be taken seriously and I will participate fully in any investigation that takes place,” she said, while adding that the purported victims had never complained.

#5
Brunette, about middle 30's, not overweight or deformed, female. Has all her equipment, plain not glamorous. What else do you want ? Your average waitress or cashier in appearance.
Adequate, not sporty.
You don't have to call back and, I assume, its free. And its Thursday

[Gateway Pundit] A Justice Department official who helped oversee the controversial probes of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and Russian interference in the 2016 election stepped down this week.

David Laufman, an experienced federal prosecutor who in 2014 became chief of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, said farewell to colleagues Wednesday. He cited personal reasons.

"It’s tough to leave a mission this compelling and an institution as exceptional as the Department of Justice," said Laufman, 59. "But I know that prosecutors and agents will continue to bring to their work precisely what the American people should expect: a fierce and relentless commitment to protect the national security of the United States."

Critics noted that Laufman had donated to Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, referring to him as a "holdover."

#12
Email probe? Oh, do you mean the whitewash where there was a wholesale destruction of incriminating documents, the mishandling of classified info, obstruction of justice, sedition, treason, espionage and perjured testimony?

[FOX] EXCLUSIVE ‐ Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee who has been leading a congressional investigation into President Trump's alleged ties to Russia, had extensive contact last year with a lobbyist for a Russian oligarch who was offering Warner access to former British spy and dossier author Christopher Steele, according to text messages obtained exclusively by Fox News.Graphic is for the purposes of sardonic humor only. It will be a cold day in hell before any of these lizards go on the box.
"We have so much to discuss u need to be careful but we can help our country get rid of Donald Trump," Warner texted the lobbyist, Adam Waldman, on March 22, 2017.

Steele famously put together the anti-Trump dossier of unverified information that was used by FBI and Justice Department officials in October 2016 to get a warrant to conduct surveillance of former Trump adviser Carter Page. Despite the efforts, Steele has not agreed to an interview with the committee.

Secrecy seemed very important to Warner as the conversation with Waldman heated up March 29, when the lobbyist revealed that Steele wanted a bipartisan letter from Warner and the committee’s chairman, North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr, inviting him to talk to the Senate intelligence panel.

Throughout the text exchanges, Warner seemed particularly intent on connecting directly with Steele without anyone else on the Senate Intelligence Committee being in the loop -- at least initially. In one text to the lobbyist, Warner wrote that he would "rather not have a paper trail" of his messages.Emphasis added.

#6
Waldman offered last March to connect Warner with Steele to discuss the infamous dossier. The article states that “secrecy seemed very important to Warner” and that the senator “seemed particularly intent on connecting directly with Steele without anyone else on the Senate Intelligence Committee being in the loop ― at least initially.”

But as the Fox News story eventually acknowledges, Waldman informed the intelligence committee about the messages months ago, and the communication appears to fall in line with Warner’s duties on the intelligence committee.

Rubio pointed this out in his tweet Thursday.

“Sen. Warner fully disclosed this to the committee four months ago,” he wrote on Twitter, with a link to the article. He continued to note that the text messages have had “zero impact on our work.”

Note the timeline. That's 7 months Warner kept quiet. He eventually saw that he would get caught.

#11
Poor Marco. He's the sort who will roll over hard under minimal pressure in a Grand Jury situation. If he's lucky, he's actually as out of the loop as he always comes off. If not, the jogging alone and "Sunday drives to clear his head" won't end well for him.

[FreeBeacon] Federal authorities scrambled to redact and keep classified key information revealing major abuses of the U.S. surveillance apparatus that targeted President Donald Trump's associates in the lead up to the 2016 election, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation who said the latest information corroborates findings recently made public by House Intelligence Committee officials.

On the heels of the release of a classified memo by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee disclosing that the FBI relied heavily on a widely discredited anti-Trump dossier to carry out unwarranted surveillance on Trump allies, Senate investigators this week made public their own findings that appear to corroborate the events.

The new criminal referral issued by Sens. Chuck Grassley and Lindsay Graham, both Senate Judiciary Committee members, calls for a formal investigation into Christopher Steele, the onetime British spy who compiled the dossier on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Continued on Page 49

#2
Not strange at all, Besoeker. We've been suspecting stuff like this for the last decade, yet only recently has it been publicly documented.

The strange, yet satisfying, part is that we actually are getting proof of our suspicions. I'm still waiting for the big 'information squelch', but believe that the cat is out of the bag too far now. We're even hearing peeps from the MSM, although through severe filters.

The next couple of months might be interesting and hopefully the Dems don't get the house back. Then this all goes away.

[BizPakReview] We now know that U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., got a copy of the anti-Trump dossier directly from the political opposition research firm Fusion GPS.

At least, that’s according to The Washington Post [Paywall].
In an article titled, "Hero or hired gun? How a British former spy became a flash point in the Russia investigation," the newspaper detailed how McCain came to have a copy of the unverified dossier that he then forwarded to the FBI.

The article erases any doubt that McCain may not have known the origins of the dossier. It’s not clear if the Republican lawmaker knew that the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign provided funding for the research.

Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow and friend of Christopher Steele, the ex-British spy behind the dossier, reached out to David Kramer to get the research on Trump into the hands of the Republicans, The Post reported.

Kramer, a former State Department official and close associate of McCain, would arrange for Wood to meet the senator in Canada in December 2016.
Wood described what was in the infamous dossier and told McCain, who he said "was visibly shocked," that he could arrange for him to review it.

"I told him, ’I know there’s a document. I haven’t read it, but it seems to me that it’s reliably set up,’" he said, according to The Post.

More from The Post on what happened next:

Ten days later, in a cloak-and-dagger scene, Kramer and Steele arranged to meet at Heathrow Airport in London. Kramer was told that he should look for a man wearing a blue raincoat and carrying a Financial Times under his arm, according to people familiar with the episode.

Kramer accompanied Steele to his home, where he spent a few hours reviewing the Trump research.

Back in Washington, Kramer received a copy of the dossier from Simpson and completed the handoff to McCain.

A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.